I'm not sure about that Jeff.

I have come across situations where the firehose cursor is faster than the loop.

I pinned it down to the loop running many separate queries where...

SELECT P.*

FROM PurchaseOrders AS P

INNER JOIN (

SELECT PurchaseOrderNumber, Max(Posuf) AS LastPosuf

FROM PurchaseOrders

GROUP BY PurchaseOrderNumber

) AS PM

ON P.PurchaseOrdernumber = PM.PurchaseOrdernumber

AND P.Posuf = PM.LastPosuf

I know of a company who use "The company can't afford it" whenever staff perks com up, or for that matter whenever the annual bonus is due.

This is the same...

You could always fall back to the old

SET ROWCOUNT @Variable

SELECT ....etc

SET ROWCOUNT 0

In terms of set based processing it simply means that you look at the data as a whole...

The fundamental ideas about Agile Development XP, RUP, AUP etc are good, it is the practice that worries me.

In Britain, industry wants a cheap temporary fix that will last for...

I sometimes think that companies hire DBAs...

All the articles I have read on agile development acknowledge that the database layer is the one that acts as a bottle neck.

Agile development is about completing a single project...

I've played around with schemas a bit and the problems I have had have been to do with security. To be more precise, granting access to objects in one...

In terms of design I would have 3 tables

1. Location

2. User

3. LocationUserMap

This means that locations and users are independent and the relationship between them is held in the mapping table.

Using SELECT INTO to create the initial table structure with no records is "blink of an eye" fast.

SELECT INTO to...

So why would SELECT INTO not lock sysobjects?

Surely any form of creation of an object would have a small lock on sysobjects?

The other point is, how often are records created...

Jeff, I have found that small amounts of data in table variables outperforms the same thing done in temporary tables.

As data volumes increase table variables rapidly lose any advantage. ...

Let us suppose you have tables with say 25 million bank account details and child benefit information.

You allow direct read access on these tables so said government half wit can...

I don't really understand what you have written but it sounds as if you want to use a case statement within a SUM.

SELECT SUM(CASE Transactions.TollDiscountID WHEN 4 THEN 1 ELSE...

The Microsoft article says that table variables are not memory only structures and are created in TEMPDB if needed. My experience has been that large inserts into table variables...